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Following the Cold War’s end, the West shifted toward globalism, multiculturalism, and institutional ideologies like DEI, reframing identity away from Cold War normativity. For many White men—especially outside elite or academic circles—this shift felt like cultural exile. Where they were once affirmed by the system, they were now implicitly pathologized or de-centered by it. In contrast, Japan retained its ethnocentric cultural continuity longer, and its media never fully adopted the guilt-laden narratives that reshaped the Western public sphere. For this reason, many disaffected or alienated White men have found a sense of belonging, meaning, or resonance in Japanese pop culture—not because it’s escapist or exotic, but because it echoes the moral and aesthetic codes of a world they once trusted. In this sense, anime and video games aren’t just entertainment; they’re artifacts of a lost cultural language, one that still speaks to a displaced identity seeking relevance in a modernity no longer built in its image.